Detroit Pistons Power Rankings - 2014-15

The good news: Detroit is one of six teams firmly in the hunt for the East's final two playoff spots. The bad news: Our friends at numberFire.com rate the Pistons as only a 12.9 percent shot to snag one of them, behind Indiana (48.4 percent), Charlotte (45.1), Miami (41.2), Brooklyn (33.0) and Boston (19.7).

The All-Star break came at the right time for the Pistons, who entered it on a 4-7 slide and emerged with Reggie Jackson and two impressive W's. Not sure what Jackson's arrival means for Brandon Jennings -- on top of Greg Monroe's uncertain future -- but the present just got a lot more promising.

The floundering, then overachieving, then ... wildly erratic Pistons? They aren't as bad as their start or as good as they looked winning 12 of 15 after waiving Josh Smith. Now they're figuring out whether they can stay close enough to the latter to end a five-year playoff drought. (Patrick Hayes, TrueHoop Network)

D.J. Augustin's recent back-to-back games with at least 25 points and 10 assists put him on a short list with Steph Curry, Chris Paul and James Harden as players who've achieved that feat this season. The previous Pistons players to do so? Jerry Stackhouse in 2000-01, and Isiah Thomas in 1989-90.

Winning the Josh Smith Bowl was significant in itself for the Pistons -- on the same night as Kevin Love's return to Minneapolis, no less -- but mostly because Detroit dropped its first four games in the wake of losing Brandon Jennings rather than the more attention-grabbing Smith storyline.

Days after becoming the first Piston with at least 20 points and 20 assists in a game since Isiah Thomas way back in April 1985, Brandon Jennings has been struck down by an Achilles tear that has your lefty-loving committee (of one) too down to even contemplate Josh Smith's looming return yet.

We're not supposed to get too giddy about multiple East teams, but the Pistons are making it tougher and tougher to scoff at. Sparked by a (seemingly) reborn Brandon Jennings, Detroit is 11-2 since dumping Josh Smith, with an average win margin of plus-9.2 in that span and a top-five offense and defense.

Our pals over at numberFire.com say Detroit's playoff odds are up to 24.2 percent. Before waiving Josh Smith, those same friends rated the Pistons' playoff chances at 4.2 percent. For the record: No team in history has ever started 5-23 or worse through 28 games and reached the playoffs.

All that second-guessing of the decision to waive Josh Smith with $30 million-ish left on his contract, instead of sending him away Allen Iverson style until a trade could be found, gets drowned out pretty quickly when you start out 5-0 post-Josh. So what if the opposition in those games is a combined 64-110?

Who else spent the weekend counting down until lunchtime Monday to see what sort of bombshell surprise Stan Van Gundy has in store for us this week? Not that you can quibble with the results after seeing how liberated the Pistons look -- Andre Drummond in particular -- post-Josh Smith.

Andre Drummond recently reeled off five straight double-doubles, averaging 16.4 PPG and 15.2 RPG in that stretch, then rumbled for 18 points and 20 boards in Sunday's loss at Brooklyn. Which means that we might finally be seeing something watchable out of the Stan Van Gundy Pistons.

No one will be asking if the Pistons can win more games than the Lions. No one will be asking if the Pistons can beat Kentucky. Not after Detroit somehow swept a road back-to-back in Phoenix and Sacramento to bring a halt to that 13-game losing streak that stretched all the way back to Nov. 14.

The Stan Van Gundy Pistons are suddenly (and stunningly) this season's Milwaukee. Which is to say they came in aspiring to compete for the No. 8 seed in the East -- just like last season's Bucks -- only to find themselves winning as often as a Philly team that's just trying to win the lottery.

The enormity of the task Stan Van Gundy has taken on surely has to be setting in. Andre Drummond finally had two Drummond-esque games against the Bucks with Brandon Jennings out, but SVG felt the need to shuffle the lineup amid all the losing and fourth-quarter misfiring, shifting Greg Monroe to a bench role.

Not even your lefties-obsessed committee (of one) can focus on Greg Monroe's free-agent drive. Or Brandon Jennings' PER renaissance. Or Josh Smith's struggles in an SVG world. The story continues to be Andre Drummond's 11.6 PER and .397 field-goal percentage ... after last season's .623.

Can't check Twitter these days without hearing about Brandon Jennings' gaudy PER of 23.6. The Pistons, of course, were hoping such numbers would be found next to Andre Drummond's name after a Team USA summer, but AD's PER is a mere 12.0 and prompted this inquest from Zach Lowe.

I suspect the failure to hold a double-digit lead over Utah, despite another big dose of Greg Monroe, is going to stick with Stan Van Gundy for days. If the Pistons finished that one off at home as they should have, they'd be taking a three-game winning streak into their daunting four-game road trip.

Haven't seen the renovations at The Palace firsthand, but instinct tells me arena-goers will notice the upgrades in the building faster than they'll spot the progress in Detroit's on-court makeover. Stan Van Gundy himself admits he doesn't yet "have a handle on what this team can do offensively."

Can Stan Van Gundy do for Andre Drummond, structure-wise, what he did for Dwight Howard? Or should we skip right to the other burning question in Motown: Can Stan continue to get the sort of offensive discipline from Josh Smith seen throughout exhibition play -- only seven 3s attempted! -- all season?

Early reviews of Stan Van Gundy's front-office work have been mixed after Detroit's big-money splash on Jodie Meeks and the Greg Monroe saga. There's no doubt, though, that the man can coach. So you bet on SVG to make a flawed roster look less flawed once the games start.